Alston and Elivor Callahan owned a piece of property atop Red Mountain overlooking Birmingham, Alabama. The Callahans requested a house that would give them the sense of living in a control tower, similar to the one at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, to overlook the city. Safdie's proposal comprised of a series of intersected cubes rotated at 45 degrees with the horizontal. The unique geometry with an elongated rectangular plan suited this unusual site. The design approach resulted in an extroverted yet transparent building that commands its surroundings.

Corrour Estate evokes the tradition of great Scottish houses and weaves together remnants of the original Victorian-era great house on the site, destroyed by fire in 1940. A glass-vaulted Great Hall forms the center of the house and is flanked by two masonry volumes, one rectangular, the other cylindrical. These volumes are penetrated by glass structures that are, respectively, conical and pyramidal. Surviving original granite outbuildings accommodate kitchens and other back-of-house functions. The split-face granite surfaces of the new structure match those of the original. The hunting lodge is sited so that each of the eight guest suites have views of Loch Ossian, while walkways and terraces afford views of the surrounding Highlands. In approving the design, The Royal Fine Arts Commission of Scotland noted that the complex is 'destined to become one of the few examples of world-class 20th-century architecture in Scotland.'